Biotic Regulation: Publications

Makarieva A.M., Gorshkov V.G., Li B.-L., Nobre A.D. (2010) A critique of some modern applications of the Carnot heat engine concept: the dissipative heat engine cannot exist. Proceedings of the Royal Society Series A Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 466, 1893-1902. doi:10.1098/rspa.2009.0581.

AbstractIn several recent studies, a heat engine operating on the basis of the Carnot cycle is considered, where the mechanical work performed by the engine is dissipated within the engine at the temperature of the warmer isotherm and the resulting heat is added to the engine together with an external heat input.This internal dissipation is supposed to increase the total heat input to the engine and elevate the amount of mechanical work produced by the engine per cycle. Here it is argued that such a dissipative heat
engine violates the laws of thermodynamics. The existing physical models employing
the dissipative heat engine concept,in particular the heat engine model of hurricane development, need to be revised.

Notes

The critique presented in this paper has a rich history, see here. Its major goal is to make space for a constructive consideration of the rich physics of the condensation-induced atmospheric dynamics — the major physical principle of the biotic pump of atmospheric moisture. In the press release devoted to this paper we wrote:

In a quest to understand the nature of atmospheric motions, a
thermodynamic view on the atmosphere as a heat engine of some kind has
become quite wide-spread. In our work we show that the dissipative
heat engine where mechanical work output is supposed to grow due to
internal dissipation of work produced in the previous cycles, is
thermodynamically inconsistent and cannot exist. Our results indicate
that the models employing the dissipative heat engine, in particular,
the hurricane model of K. Emanuel, are incorrect.

This paper belongs to the series of papers on a new physical mechanism
of atmospheric dynamics developed by our group. The physical core of
this mechanism consists in the fact that condensation of water vapor
reduces air pressure via removal of vapor from the gas phase. This
leads to formation of spatial pressure gradients and thus initiates
atmospheric circulation on a variety of spatial and temporal scales. In another recent paper published in November 2009 in Physics Letters A,
Condensation-induced kinematics and dynamics of cyclones, hurricanes and tornadoes,
it was shown that this approach yields a unified quantitative
description of hurricanes and tornadoes.

However, the most important implication of the new approach concerns
the role of forests in sustaining the water cycle on land. Since
condensation reduces air pressure, intense condensation of water vapor
associated with evapotranspiration of natural forests creates regional
areas of low pressure. In the result, moist air flows from the
adjacent ocean to the continent, thus compensating for the loss of
water to the ocean via the river runoff. Deforestation reverses the
ocean-to-land atmospheric moisture flow thus locking the continent for
ocean moisture and induces rapid desertification. Conversely,
restoration of a contiguous, spatially significant forest cover
protects the continent against extreme weather events like both floods
and droughts.

These ideas are new to the meteorological community and have been met with some resistance. This prompted us to take a critical approach to
the established meteorological lines of thought (like viewing the
hurricanes as a heat engine) to show that they do not provide a
satisfactory explanation of the atmospheric phenomena and that there
are both space and need for developing new theories.

In connection to the recently hacked CRU e-mails, the community of
climate scientists has been criticized for possible distortions of the
peer-review process that would keep unorthodox ideas out of the
mainstream literature. In our view, our critical paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society Series A might be a good opportunity for external observers to follow how the mainstream climate science would respond to a critique of its physical
fundamentals and to what degree it is receptive to new ideas in
atmospheric physics.